23 February 2021
If you’ve followed the clean energy debate for some time (and you’re on this website, so it’s likely) you’ll know of a familiar gambit to critique wind and solar – creating an impossible failure and always claiming that it’s failing. The blackout in Texas has caused a resurgence of many of these old ideas, and it’s worth exploring them, because they highlight exactly what role wind power will play in increasingly stressed world grids.
First came a claim that Texas’ relatively large fleet of wind power had frozen. There is still little clarity on this. ERCOT claimed half the state’s wind turbines were frozen, but we don’t know for how long. I looked at wind output in other regions, and it roughly matches the profile of Texas, suggesting that whatever role this played in wind’s output, it was limited. An analysis from Wood Mackenzie confirms earlier statements from ERCOT that for around half a day, about half the state’s wind fleet were impact